Review on 💾 Diskless Synology DS218+ 2-bay NAS DiskStation by Richard Gallagher

After announcing the 918+ earlier this year, I postponed my planned purchase of the 916+ because I need support for two NVM SSDs to improve caching/performance. 4GB storage expansion and 4 x 8TB IronWolf Pro drives. The hardware was installed and operational in less than 30 minutes. Installation was easy, I went with the SHR-1 to have more space and still get the benefits of striping. It took some time to complete the initial parity check, but all disks were checked. I've been using the system for over a month now. My Macs support it with TimeMachine. I ran CloudStation Sync to automatically sync the folder across all systems. I have a VPN setup so I can log in and access the server on the go. I use PhotoStation to centralize family photos and view them online and share them with friends and family. With Remote DSM enabled, I can log in from outside and upload/download files over the internet, even from organizations that normally block standard file sharing sites. To be honest, this NAS with the DSM software can do a lot more than I intended. it, but it worked absolutely as I expected. Even with IronWolf Pro drives, which many refer to as "noisy" drives, this system is very quiet and I never hear it running. It's so quiet in fact that I changed the fan settings to run all the time to cool the drives and I still can't hear it. From reading other reviews, I noticed that one person saw a flashing blue light when restarting. / no visible activity - it is important that you give the set-top box time to start up. This blinking blue light means the system is booting but is in the process of checking disks like striping etc. This can take a while, especially if you have bigger hard drives and more TB, and after a while, I mean, this can take many hours. Just be patient and give the set-top box the time it needs to ensure system readiness and avoid data loss.